Now-a-days it’s all about voice control and the always-attentive Google Now. Just say “OK Google” to take the first step of a journey of discovery!

2. Google Now

This feature is a marvel. This allows Google access to your email, your calendar, your private thoughts and your darkest desires, but that’s a small price to pay for a system that makes the information you appear when you need it, even if you didn’t know you needed it. It’s mobile magic!

3. User Accounts

This app is most useful for a device that multiple people use. It’s handy to have a guest mode for when people are over: it means they can get online and check stuff without seeing your private emails or secrets of your mobile life. And of course it’s good for keeping kids from messing with your stuff.

4. Active/ Ambient Display

This feature is only available on devices with an OLED screen, although third party apps can add similar features to other devices – but Active/Ambient Display is both simple and useful. When a new notification arrives, the screen briefly displays it so you can either do something about it or ignore it without having to reach for and wake your phone. Also, it wakes the screen when you pick the device up, which saves you a swipe.

5. Quick Swipe

Android’s Quick Settings panel appears in many different formats, but no matter what it looks like it’s incredibly useful. Quick Settings provides you with instant access to the most commonly used features and settings on your phone, while notifying you if there are problems with any of them. (While Apple products have this tool appearing from the bottom, Android swipes from the TOP).

6. Priority Mode

If you carry your device with you at all times, being able to set different priority levels for different things is a really useful feature. This ensures that you don’t get bothered with personal stuff when you’re at work, or that you won’t be bothered with work stuff when you’re trying to take a nap. This is another thing that Apple has copied, but Android’s version is more innovative: a cool part to this feature is the ability to set downtime, a period during which interruptions are blocked and after which the interruptions are automatically switched back on.

7. Pin App

The ability to pin an app allows you to make it full screen and keep it there until you enter a passcode. It’s also useful for snoopy friends, when you show somebody a funny text and they immediately start trying to look at your other messages or your photo album.

8. Wireless charging

Not all Android phones have this feature, but the ones that do are that little bit less demanding than ones that don’t. With wireless charging mats starting to appear everywhere, it’s a feature that we’ll soon be able to take advantage of more often.

9. Fast Charging

You can only have this feature if your device supports it, and if the manufacturer includes a fast charger in the box. Fast charging is awesome; it amps up the power to start off with, to get as much juice into the battery as quickly as possible, and then calms down a bit to finish topping up the charge.

10. Choice

This is one of the reasons so many people like Android. Unlike certain other platforms, there’s a massive choice of handsets to choose from at all kinds of prices – and even the less expensive ones are really good.